Edwards Group: Biodiversity benefits of restoration in sub-Saharan Africa
Supervisor:
Professor David Edwards
Overview:
The AFR100 initiative has commitments to restore 129-million hectares of land by 2030 in sub-Saharan Africa. A key question is how different forms of restoration – natural regeneration, plantations, and on-farm approaches – impact biodiversity and associated habitat recovery in African savanna woodlands and montane forests. In tropical moist forests, natural regeneration offers improved biodiversity and carbon values versus plantations. Yet most of the restoration in sub-Saharan Africa will take place in savanna woodland and montane forest systems, and will include on-farm agroforestry and silvopasture. This project will use field sampling, global range maps, remotely sensed carbon products, and microclimate projections to quantify biodiversity outcomes across the range of restoration approaches in African savanna woodlands and montane forests.
Importance of Research:
To keep global temperature rise to beneath 2C as agreed in The Paris Agreement will require large-scale restoration. The AFR100 initiative has commitments to restore 128-million hectares– an area the size of Germany, France, and the UK combined – by 2030 in sub-Saharan Africa. If well managed, restoration can break the vicious cycle of poverty and land degradation, by recovering key ecosystem functions and services, including biodiversity. A key question is what are the costs and benefits of different restoration strategies for biodiversity? This PhD will fill this urgent research gap to provide a critical evidence base biodiversity outcomes that will be vital for the massive-scale roll-out of restoration in sub-Saharan Africa through this and the coming decade. It will feed into restoration planning and action via Edwards’ extensive network of government, business, and NGO collaborators within the region.
Project Summary:
An urgent research gap is understanding the biodiversity outcomes of different restoration forms in African savanna woodland and montane forest ecosystems. This PhD project will quantify how natural regeneration, plantations, and on-farm (agroforestry, silvopasture) restoration impact biodiversity and associated habitat structure, carbon and microclimate. It will use a combination of field data collection, preexisting databases, and global range maps to quantify and project species outcomes for birds or another taxa as per the applicants expertise (we have expertise of working with trees, orchids, dung beetles, and butterflies, among others). It will then use remote-sensing products and microclimate modelling to link biodiversity outcomes to different restoration impacts on habitat structure and climate.
What will the successful applicant do?
• Bring together evidence of species habitat use from field data collection and published studies/databases
• Build models that link species occupancy to restoration type and age
• Use species range maps to upscale findings to project restoration outcomes across relevant African savanna woodlands and montane forests
• Link remotely sensed carbon products and microclimate projections to quantify and upscale the impacts of different restoration forms.
References
Edwards DP, Cerullo GR (2024) Biodiversity is central for restoration. Current Biology 34: R371-R379 DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.032
Edwards DP, Cerullo GR, Balmford AP, Chazdon RL, Chomba S, Worthington TA, Harrison RD (2021) Mainstreaming tropical restoration to deliver environmental benefits and socially equitable outcomes. Current Biology 31: R1326-R1341 DOI:10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.058
Hua F, Bruijnzeel LA, Meli P, Martin PA, McEvoy C, Zhang J, Pena Arancibia JL, Brancalion PHS, Smith P, Edwards DP, Balmford A (2022) The ecosystem service and biodiversity benefits of restoration. Science 376: 839-844 DOI:10.1126/science.abl4649
Trew BT, Edwards DP, Lees AC, Klinges DH, Early R, Svatek M, Plichta R, Matula R, Okello J, Niessner A, Barthel M, Six J, Maeda EE, Barlow J, Nascimento RO, Berenguer E, Ferreira J, Sallo-Bravo J, Maclean IMD (2024) Novel temperatures are already widespread beneath the world’s tropical forest canopies. Nature Climate Change 14: 753-759 DOI:10.1038/s41558-024-02031-0